It sounds like you want to download the DF Starter Pack. That's a collection of all the utilities and the most popular graphics packs.

The RPS Article uses Stonesense, which is in the Starter Pack, but I'm not sure if you can actually play the game like that. From what I can tell, it's just a visualizer, although it used to have UI functionality?Someone else will have to weigh in here.

And the most important page for actually playing the game is the quickstart guide. It's an excellent tutorial and covers pretty much everything you need to know.Use the wiki extensively, and if you have questions, you can ask them in the Forum as well.

Regarding complexity, the main thing to remember is that (almost) all of us play many, many fortresses, restarting again and again, generating new worlds as we go.

So it's no problem for you to do that too. After the quickstart guide, focus on one or two things you want to learn, read through the wiki, try it out. There's so much to learn and so much is added in each new release that it's easy to be overwhelmed. Don't be. Try stuff out. Laugh as the dorfs all die again. Quit if it seems your embark is boring or dying of fps death (Slowing down to an unplayable crawl, which is a danger in many unoptimized alpha games like this one).

Try something new each time, but remember that no fortress is required to have every single industry operating at once.

The RPS Article uses Stonesense, which is in the Starter Pack, but I'm not sure if you can actually play the game like that. From what I can tell, it's just a visualizer, although it used to have UI functionality?Someone else will have to weigh in here.

The RPS article is about a feature that still exists, "stonesense overlay". However, it was in very early development back then, and has not progressed much since then. A number of pack authors and gaming sites jumped on the "omg you can play DF with Stonesense" bandwagon, even though the Stonesense/DFHack teams told them that it was hardly stable. So no, you can't reliably play with it, but it also hasn't been removed (or changed since then, really).

Just avoid Glaciers and sinister/haunted/terrifying biomes until you have the basics down (and maybe more).Glaciers require you to know how to conquer the caverns while the other three (which can combine with Glaciers, challenge forts often seek out terrifying Glaciers) require luck and skill and hopefully no giant mosquito corpses flying around.

Do not dig too deep until you know what you are doing too (you'll see the barrier between too deep and not too deep) because the Clowns are no joke even if an unkindness of (undead) ravens beat one and conquered the circus.

One question.I was trying to use dwarf therapist to manage the jobs but i cant get it to run. I read somewhere that i cant use DFHack at the same time so i disabled it. Started the game again the the game was a bit bugged and could see dwarf therapist anyway. I have DT in "green". I am doing something wrong?

I read somewhere that i cant use DFHack at the same time so i disabled it. Started the game again the the game was a bit bugged and could see dwarf therapist anyway. I have DT in "green". I am doing something wrong?

Where did you read that? That's entirely untrue.Also, what does "bugged" mean, exactly? My guess is that you're using a tileset that requires TWBT, which requires DFHack, but I can't tell for sure without more details.